I still have a French Open notebook column coming for y’all soon to tie up a few loose ends from Paris, but in the meantime, I wanted to write about the mother-of-two and longtime resident of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. who has been the topic of much conversation at WTA 500 Queen’s Club this week.
No, it’s not Serena Williams, but she did look pretty sharp in her comeback doubles win with Victoria Mboko on Tuesday. Her court sense and serve particularly impressed—hitting 120 mph as a 44-year-old is truly legendary stuff. The only thing that looked super rusty in Serena’s return, ironically, were her returns. It’s a shame that Mboko’s knee injury in singles the next day cut short their London run, but I’m looking forward to catching up with Serena at her next stop in Berlin.
But no, the mother-of-two and longtime resident of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. who is the topic of this Bounces dispatch—along with her family—is Tatjana Maria, the defending champion at WTA 500 Queen’s Club who wasn’t given a wild card into this year’s main draw despite her reign.
38-year-old Maria is currently the oldest player in the WTA Top 100, but she finds herself on a rankings cliff this week: because her 500 points from winning last year’s title are set to expire—nearly half of her total 1,111 ranking points—with an early loss this week, she could fall outside the WTA Top 120.
Ahead of her tough second-round match at Queen’s Club against Elena Rybakina, get to know Maria through her interviews with Bounces, hear the rumored real reason why she didn’t receive a wild card, and meet her biggest project on tour: the burgeoning tennis career of her 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte.
To read the rest of this feature profile, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben
